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Mapping individual websites As soon as the Mosaic browser was released, the Web began to grow exponentially, with tens of thousands and then millions of new pages being added annually. Almost immediately, one of the key problems was trying to navigate efficiently and to search for particular pieces of information both within and across websites. Not unsurprisingly in both cases, a key strategy has been to explore and adopt spatializations as navigation tools, alongside keyword search tools and navigation bars. In this and the next section, we examine spatializations of individual websites, first detailing site maps and then mapping tools used in site planning, development and maintenance. “Where am I?” is a question asked by most people when landed in the middle of a large website by a search engine, often followed by, “What else is available on this site?” and, “How do I get to that other information?” The site map is one of the key tools that site designers can provide to help surfers answer these questions and successfully navigate through their site. At their simplest, site maps are like a book’s table of contents, while more sophisticated examples use advanced, interactive spatializations. In all cases, site maps aim to communicate, on a single screen, a site’s content and enable a user to reach it with a single click. They are becoming increasingly important as websites become larger and more complex and are nowadays a common element of Web design, especially for large corporate sites. This is not to say that all of them are successful in their task or aesthetically pleasing to view. The art and science of creating intuitive and useful website maps is still in its infancy. One of the most knowledgeable people in the nascent field of website mapping is Paul Kahn, a founding partner in the information design firm named Dynamic Diagrams. He commented: “I think website mapping is bouncing back and forth between two poles: it is absolutely necessary and it is impossible.” At present, too many site maps fail in their attempts to guide disorientated surfers to their destination. This failure is due to a number of difficult problems, such as deciding on the most appropriate level of
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detail for effective communication, trying to balance local detail necessary for practical navigation, whilst also providing a global overview of the entire site. Moreover, there are many possible elements that could be used to describe a site, all of which could be spatialized: page title, URL, screenshots, depth from home, or access restrictions. Further, the site maps themselves need to load quickly and conform to standard screen resolutions. Then there are the problems of keeping maps up to date on a dynamic site. The plate opposite is a simple “table of contents”, functional site map of Apple Computer’s website as at August 2000. It employs no spatialization, consisting purely of simple text hyperlinks to key site content, where the spatial layout of the elements has no inherent meaning. The blue hyperlinks are grouped into 11 major sections, which are laid out on the screen in three rows, the aim being visual clarity. It is a simple and effective way of showing, on a single fast-loading screen, a high-level summary of all the content of Apple’s huge website. This “table of contents” style is by far the most common form of site map employed on the Web today. This is because it is an effective mode of communication, but more crucially it is easily created and maintained.
3 . 3 : A t y p i c a l “ t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s ” s t y l e o f w e b s i t e m a p f ro m A p p l e c h i e f d e s i g n e r : unknown (Apple Computer, Inc.). a i m : to provide a simple overview listing the major content areas of Apple’s extensive website. f o r m : clean-looking hierarchical table of contents, with 11 major groups in three rows. t e c h n i q u e : simple clickable hypertext links take a user to an appropriate section of a site. d a t e : screenshot taken in August 2000. f u r t h e r i n f o r m a t i o n : try the current version at <http://www.apple.com> f u r t h e r r e a d i n g : Mapping Websites: Designing Digital Media, Paul Kahn (Rotovision, 2000).